Friendship, success, family, purpose and love. (Oh yeah, and a sexy body.) Everybody wants some of that, right? This blog is about one woman's endeavor to find, and deal with, all of those things — and the never-ending struggle to keep her apartment clean.

The Court of Blog

I have to start today with a disclaimer: This blog is not some sort of emotional court of law. I do not have to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Furthermore, in this court of blog, both sides rarely get a fair chance to argue their side.

If it were possible that that could happen I suppose I would allow it, but this isn’t some courtroom or realm of public opinion – it’s just my personal blog. Full of the things I think about.

It cannot possibly be the whole truth because don’t to know or understand the whole truth. This blog isn’t even everything I think about – and it isn’t even always true. I’ve posted quite a bit of fiction up here over the last few years.

Right now this blog is just a coping mechanism for me. A way for me to process some of the things I am thinking about and share the process. The sharing makes it seem more significant and therefore I process more. On my good days I may even be able to offer an enlightening perspective for those who read it or, if I’m also lucky, gain some enlightenment from your responses.

On a bad day it is just me whining or crying or being self-obsessed. I hope that because most of you are my friends you understand that and just let me whimper about my predicament on those bad days.

Right now, still relatively fresh from my break up, I am using the blog to sort things out into different mental and emotional piles. I’m trying to find a way to cope with being dumped by someone I love. So, I’m just trying some of these ideas out to see how thy fit or feel. So far I still haven’t developed a coping truth to tell myself about Daniel and it is therefore still very painful.

With Chris it was pretty easy to cope because a lot of the pain in the situation was self-inflicted, and for the larger part of our relationship he hadn’t been willing to do the emotional heavy-lifting a high-maintenance girl like me needs. He wasn’t the guy. I knew he wasn’t the guy. I hung onto him because I was scared and he had become comfortable.

I’m surprised how powerful comfortable became for me in that situation. I invested in him (um…dated him) for two years after we had officially broken up because I thought that he would come to his senses and decide to do the work it took to become the man he was meant to be – the man I wanted. (For the record of the court of blog: I still think he needs to be that guy – whether he’s with me or not.)

Now, I am not talking about changing the fundamental aspects of his character, I am talking about personal growth and development. When we started dating he was doing a lot of growing. But for some reason, during the course of our relationship, he just stopped. I have a few theories about why the growth stopped, but the end result is the important part – I outgrew him.

Kind of the way some of us grow out of our favorite jeans – although in a healthier fashion. I realize getting too fat for your jeans isn’t as desirable as emotional and spiritual growth – but the result is the same kind of uncomfortable, only in a physical form. It was emotionally doing all the frantic stuff I do in that situation: jumping up and down attempting to squeeze in, laying on my back, plying on the zipper – painfully doing everything I could to squeeze myself into a mold that no longer fit – ripping a few seams in the process.

So, my coping truth with Chris was that unless he (and maybe I) changed he was not the right guy for me. I had to keep reminding myself over and over that even though I felt like I wanted him he was not a big enough man for me. I wanted more than he was willing to give in almost every area of our relationship for almost the entire time we were dating.

I am high maintenance – I don’t deny it a bit. But I am high-performance too (at least I want to be) and if I had adjusted to fit with Chris I would have had to change both of those things about myself. I decided that asking for something from someone who won’t give it to you just becomes stupid after a while. I chose to move on to a bigger man – someone who had the capability of giving me what I wanted and the ability to appreciate what I had to give.

This time I thought I had a bigger man. But maybe this boils down to the same situation. He doesn’t have, or won’t give what I want and doesn’t appreciate what I have to offer. Or maybe he just doesn’t want it. The added facts that he did, originally, have and give me what I wanted and needed in a relationship might just be superfluous. And his depression may just be a distraction from a simple truth. But the idea that he is “the wrong guy” doesn’t feel true this time.

Some of you know that I don’t believe there is only one person in the world that you can be happy with. I think there are a lot of possible options. Chris was really never one of those options. In fact, most of my ex-boyfriends were never on of those options. But right now I think Daniel may have been one of the people I could have built a beautiful life with.

So yeah, my coping is not going very well. And the fact that he thinks I’m not a good option is really painful. I think it’s partially because I don’t want to be wrong anymore – and what if I’m wrong about what constitutes a good fit? That’s very upsetting. I also don’t want to start over again, it’s so exhausting. The thing I’m really hurt over is walking away from something that seemed like such a good fit.

This all feels like so much missed opportunity that I almost want it to be my fault so that I can at least look back and say, “You messed that up. This is how you messed up, and you had better not do that next time.” That isn’t to say I haven’t made any mistakes in our relationship. But nothing over-arching enough that I can point to and say – “That’s it. That’s what you did wrong. That’s what you have to avoid next time.”

Well, I did learn some things last time and, as a result, this time I will not let him string me along for two years after breaking up with me. Daniel is a good guy so he wouldn’t do this on purpose, but he does sincerely want to be my friend. But I sincerely cannot do that without emotionally injuring myself. The problem is I don’t want to be his friend. I want to be his best friend.

He could probably easily hold me at arm’s length. He’s strong and he is definitely resolute about the idea that we are not a good fit. But to be his friend I would have to constantly fight my desire to break past that arm- length barrier. I have this … like psychic, emotional image of him holding tightly onto my shoulders with his arms completely straight and seeing myself (maybe feeling myself) struggle to get closer to him – and then I imagine the bruises that would be on my arms as a result of the struggle.

Not a pretty picture.

So I thought about this whole “being friends” thing he suggested and I can’t imagine what kind of friends we could be. Due to the nature of the breakup and the way I still feel about him I can’t do it. If there is no hope of us getting back together – as he said believes – then I can’t put myself in a position to continue being in love with him.

Anyway, this blog has really rambled on long enough. I don’t have any healing, closure-seeking statements at the end this time cause I don’t know how to close this. But I did tell him we can’t be friends – at least right now. Then I cried for a couple of hours. That’s sort of closed, I guess. And it hurt. It hurt really, really badly.